Snake Eyes
by Mr Sinister
Summary: Bobby Drake & Emma Frost go on a holiday to Las Vegas... but can they survive it?
1. My Name Is

**_Snake Eyes_**

**_Chapter One: My Name Is..._**

_ Hi, world. I'm Bobby Drake, and I love Las Vegas._

That's my first thought as I wake up next to Emma in our expensive hotel room after our first night out here in Vegas. We spent most of last evening throwing money and chips at slot machines and card dealers – well, I did, anyway. Emma just used her telepathy to work out what cards the other poker players had, and making lots of money to go with it. She never went so far as to make them suspicious, of course, because that wouldn't have gone very well for anybody, least of all us. I'd hate to have come out here for a holiday and ended up buried up to my neck in the middle of the Nevada desert. For one thing, it would have ruined my suit, and that would have annoyed Emma – and that's something I think is a lot scarier than Mafia Wise Guys Dumb and Dumber threatening to break my legs. Trust me, you don't know frightening until you've seen Emma in full flow. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, and that's saying something.

Rolling over to her, I gently kiss her on the forehead, and she opens her brilliantly ice-blue eyes sleepily, giving me a half-awake scowl as she does so. "You know, I was still dreaming, Drake," she says sourly. "It was a rather nice dream about strawberry shortcake and cream, and it didn't involve you. Thank you for ruining it by waking me up." She leans closer to me and kisses me on the lips, drawing me closer to her as she does so, her hand laying itself provocatively on my hip. "Then again... reality does have its perks. Perhaps I'll stay a while." She sits up and puts on her glasses so that she can see me a bit more clearly, and then folds her arms, waiting for me to get up to her eye-level. "So how did you like your first night in Vegas? Was it everything you'd hoped it would be?"

"Yeah, it's a great town," I say, truthfully, "but I'm real glad that we didn't get jumped on by the casino security, the way you were raking in all that money."

"Oh, _relax_, Robert," she replies, waving a hand dismissively, "nobody was ever in danger. Remember who you're talking to – I have friends in high places here, who owe me plenty of favours." Sensing my next question before it even finds its way to my lips, she continues "And yes, they were old Hellfire Club visitors who I used to see regularly at parties. Let's just say I made an impression on them, shall we?" She raises an eyebrow. "And that's all the explanation you're going to get, so put those bad thoughts out of your mind before I have to scrub them out."

"Oh, they're all gone," I say hastily, sticking the little finger of my left hand into my ear and twisting it twice quickly. "No scrubbing necessary, believe me."

Emma smiles crookedly. "Good boy. Now are we going to order breakfast, or should we put it off for a little while? I'm sure we could find _something_ to occupy us in the meantime." Just to illustrate her point (which never needs illustrating, really. Emma's subtle like that), she presses her naked body against me, her leg snaking across mine and her hand cupping my jaw delicately as she kisses me. "Ooh," she says, smiling again as she rubs against my hip. "I think I just got your answer... breakfast can _definitely_ wait."

* * *

Two hours later, we're sitting up in bed again, eating the breakfast that room service brought up to us a few minutes ago. Emma sips her orange juice and takes a bite of her toast, wiping some stray crumbs off the side of her mouth with one finger and opening the paper that came with the food. "Hmm," she says, more to herself than anybody else. "Nothing much is happening today – how very disappointing. Oh well, I suppose I shall have to have some fun instead. What do you say, Drake? Shall we go and drink our body weight in alcohol and make this town regret ever letting us stay?"

"Sounds like a good plan to me," I say, grinning broadly. "Say – should I wear the tuxedo this evening, or just go for the tourist shorts and Hawaiian shirt?"

"Oh, the tuxedo, naturally," Emma replies. "The shorts and the shirt just aren't proper evening wear. Maybe when you're forty and developing a gut they'll suit you better, but for now you should try looking as smart as possible. Some of those casinos won't let you in otherwise."

"Thanks a lot, Emma – it's nice to know you think I'm so respectable," I say, getting up out of bed and picking up a freshly-folded towel from the chair set against the table across the room. "I'm going for a shower. You want to share?"

"Not today, Robert," Emma chuckles. "You only get to get lucky once this morning, I'm afraid. Besides, I want to wash my hair, and you've never been all that good with applying shampoo, have you?" She swings her feet out of bed and pads over to the door, where her shower robe is hanging off a hook. Slipping her naked body into it in one single fluid movement, she continues "I'll be watching the news until you decide to trade places." Picking up the TV remote, she flicks it on as she sits back down on the bed, settling herself back into her nest of pillows. "Don't use up all the hot water, now."

"I'll try not to, boss," I say, stepping into the bathroom and starting to run the shower, the water pattering against the sides of the shower stall quietly as steam starts to fog the glass. When I'm sure the water is warm enough, I step in and quickly scrub away my troubles, singing some Def Leppard just for good measure. I'm only a few bars into the first song when Emma makes her objections clear.

"I can still hear you, you know," she calls sourly as she turns the volume up on the TV to an almost deafening degree. "If you're going to sing, you could at least try to sing something a little less... dated – for the sake of my sanity, if nothing else."

"Oh, you're just jealous of my awesome musical talents," I say as I step out of the shower and start towelling myself off. I walk back out into the bedroom and bend over the bed, nuzzling Emma on the neck and making her twist away in annoyance as my wet hair drips onto the pale skin of her chest.

"Being cute won't save you, Drake," she says as she pushes herself to her feet and starts walking towards the shower. She turns back towards me for a moment, looking thoughtfully evil. "I may have to inflict some Eurhythmics on you as payback."

"You wouldn't dare," I say, mock-horror filling my voice (I actually like them, but our little games always go like this. It's one of the things that make this whole deal fun, you see).

Emma grins. "I would. And let me warn you now... Annie Lennox I'm not."

"Well, just as long as you're not that guy out of Slipknot either, we're all good," I say, pulling on some clean underwear and then dressing myself in a fresh white shirt, some comfortable jeans and a clean pair of smart shoes. After all, despite what I said to Emma... I might be a tourist, but there's absolutely no reason to look like one.

When Emma has emerged from the shower and dressed herself in an expensive white suit (one of the five that she brought with her), we leave the hotel room and make our way to the nearest casino. Without the benefit of the hotel's air-conditioning, the heat of the desert around us is pretty stifling, so while we're walking we have to take turns drinking from a bottle of water that we took from the hotel room. It's not much, but it keeps us from being totally overwhelmed by the environment, so that's a blessing. "What I wouldn't give for some decent rain right now," Emma says wistfully. "I wonder how these people cope, year in and year out."

"I don't know, but I'm guessing it involves ceiling fans and sun-shades," I say, coating my fingertips in ice and brushing them across my forehead before offering them to Emma. "It's not much, but it'll help cool you down a little." Emma closes her eyes and then inclines her head towards me so that I can run my fingers over the flawless skin of her cheeks and forehead, letting out an expression of relief as she does so.

"Oh, that's wonderful, Drake," she says, smiling as trickles of water course down towards her lips. "I think you have your uses after all."

"A simple 'thank you' would have been enough, you know," I say, trying my best to look as hurt as possible. "But you're welcome, anyway."

Emma smiles thinly and then walks on ahead of me. "I thought you'd feel that way." She points at the nearest casino with one porcelain-skinned hand, and says "How about we start the day there? I have a few friends in the management – perhaps we can win big there without any interference. I promise not to throw you to the security guards if they start annoying me."

"Emma, you're the most reassuring person I know," I say, rolling my eyes.

We make our way over to the doors of the casino, and walk through the entrance into the beautiful coolness of the building's lobby. I sigh with relief as I feel the cool breeze of the air-conditioning sweeping over me, and then I follow Emma out onto the floor of the casino itself. She walks confidently towards the roulette wheel after having picked up a large stack of chips from the cashier (It's almost a foot tall, which means it should last her until about lunchtime; she's not really one for small bets). When she reaches the wheel, she settles in at the side of the table and pushes out a large chunk of her stash onto the board. "Ten thousand on thirty-two black, please," she says, drawing a collective gasp of surprise from everybody around her. Prior to her little wager, everybody else had apparently just been pushing out pocket change. The croupier shrugs and spins the wheel, the little white ball rattling around as loudly as if it's the only sound in the entire room. The wheel slows and the ball stops moving, and when both have come to a complete stop, the croupier checks where the ball has landed.

"Thirty-two black," he says. I take a look at it myself before he scoops it back up again, and it has fallen nowhere near that number. In fact, it's in a red slot, which can only mean that Emma has started using her powers pretty early in the day. I'd like to say that that's unusual for her, but then I'd be lying. Smiling, Emma rakes in her winnings and leaves the table after tossing the croupier a pile of chips for himself. She moves towards a blackjack table, her hips swaying slowly as she walks and drawing the eyes of almost every man in the room. I have to wonder, though, how much of that is down to her looking hotter than hell, and how much of it is down to her using her telepathy to fuel her ego. I mean, I don't need any incentive to look, but I can be sure that at least a few of the men here have better things to worry about than a woman angling for attention.

"I can hear what you're thinking quite well enough, Drake," she says with her back to me, "and I assure you, I'm not angling for anything. I'm not even using my powers right now." She looks back at me over her shoulder, her hair falling seductively over one of her eyes. "I suppose that means I must be naturally gorgeous, wouldn't you say?"

"I guess so," I say, admitting defeat before pointing to my right with my thumb. "I'm going to go feed the slot machines. You want to come with?"

"Why not?" Emma says, shrugging her shoulders. "It might be nice to play something that I can't influence, for once." She walks towards the machines, letting her hand trail across my cheek as she does so, and then settles herself down in one of the well-worn seats after having got herself a bucket of quarters, which she offers to me as I sit down next to her. "Would you like to share?" she asks. "I think I have more quarters to waste than you do, especially since I just won ten thousand dollars." She chuckles lightly, and then puts a quarter into the slot of the machine in front of her, pulling the handle and watching as the dials in front of her spin to a halt, mismatching spectacularly. "Oh well, I suppose I had better try again," she says, feeding another quarter in. My own machine is being just as uncooperative, but there is a way I can beat the system this time. Frowning as the dials spin around, I make a thin layer of ice inside the mechanism, slowing it down to a crawl so that I can see when to let each dial stop. As each dial hits "jackpot", I smile and wait for my reward. Piles of coins spill out, and I scoop them up and dump them into the bucket – just in time for Emma to grab a handful and start pushing them into her machine without even asking.

"Hey!" I say, annoyed. "Those are mine!"

"Hmm?" Emma says, sounding a little distracted, before she turns to me and looks at her hand clenching a fistful of my coins. "Oh. Sorry about that, Drake. Why don't you go and get those exchanged for chips, and I'll find some more quarters of my own while I wait for you?"

"I don't think that's a good idea," I reply. "I hit the jackpot once – best quit while I'm ahead, you know? I really don't want to be beaten to a pulp for cheating, after all."

"Oh, relax," Emma says, waving a hand dismissively. "I told you, I have friends in high places here. You won't get touched, I promise. Not unless you ask for it, of course." Leaning over, she bites my earlobe gently. "See?"

"I didn't ask for that!" I say loudly. I'm trying to sound shocked and appalled, but I can't really say it wasn't a nice experience. "Could you do it again?"

"Maybe later," Emma says, clearly enjoying the fact that she has me dangling on her hook again – but then again, that's nothing new, so I should hardly be surprised by that at this point... "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a fortune to win."

"Isn't one fortune enough?" I ask her, picking up my bucket of quarters and getting off my stool. "Look, while you're losing all that money you just made, I'll get us some drinks – you want anything?"

"Scotch on the rocks, please," Emma replies, clearly focused on the machine again. "And be quick about it; this is thirsty work, you know."

"I can see that," I mutter, rolling my eyes. "Sit tight, and don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Emma says, before she waves me away with one hand without looking at me. "Now shoo. I'm still waiting for that drink, you know."

Shaking my head at how Emma is turning into a gambling junkie before my very eyes, I turn around and make my way towards the bar, passing all kinds of people, old and young, men and women, as they sit doing exactly what Emma is doing – stuffing money into machines that won't ever give it back. Somehow I think the roulette wheel is better; at least that way you get to interact with real people, even if it's to do what Emma does and rewrite the script so that you always win. Machines just aren't the same. As I get to the bar, I call the bartender over. She is a young woman (perhaps only a few years younger than me), and is pretty, blonde and bright-faced. Kind of standard issue for this kind of establishment, really, but she looks friendly enough. "Hi!" she says, proving my judgement correct. "What can I get you, sir?"

"Don't call me 'sir'," I say, instinctively. "It makes me sound like my dad."

The bartender smiles. "I see. So what should I call you?"

"Bobby's good, I guess. What with it being my name and all," I reply, shrugging a little.

"That seems fair," the bartender replies, after thinking it over for a moment. "What can I get you, Bobby?"

"A diet Coke and a scotch on the rocks, please," I say, handing over a ten-dollar bill.

"Coming right up," she replies after taking the money and ringing up the change. "Here you go – one diet Coke and one scotch on the rocks. Enjoy!"

"I'm sure I will," I tell her. "Keep the change. I just won big on the slot machines, so I'm feeling pretty generous."

"Thank you, Bobby," the bartender says, putting the handful of coins back into the till as she does so. "My name's Debbie, by the way."

"Nice to meet you, Debbie," I say, taking a sip of my Coke. "I'll have to get all my drinks from you in the future... but first I'd better get back to my girlfriend before she spends her entire fortune in the slots."

Debbie laughs. "Yeah, I've heard that before. Sounds like she needs rescuing – so skedaddle, hero!"

Taking that as my cue, I turn around and head back to where Emma is sitting, still putting quarters into the slot machine in front of her as if she's almost in a trance. "Drinks, Emma," I say, almost afraid to disturb her.

"Thanks, Drake," Emma replies, taking the drink from me almost without looking and then taking a sip as she yanks on the machine's handle again. "I'm very grateful."

That tears it. "Hey, Emma, you want to go do something else now?" I ask her, desperately. "I mean, you can't just sit here all day, can you?"

Shaking herself free of the trance, Emma looks at me with almost bleary eyes. "You know, Drake, you might have something there. How about we go talk to that pretty bartender again?"

"What pretty bartender? The bartender was a three hundred pound gorilla with body odour," I say, trying to sound innocent but failing miserably.

"You know, maybe I go to the wrong kinds of bars," Emma says with pursed lips and a raised eyebrow, "but I don't know many three hundred pound gorillas called Debbie, do you?"

"You were watching me, weren't you?" I ask, redundantly.

"Exactly. I'm never as unaware as you think I am, Bobby. Don't ever forget that." She taps me on the nose as if I'm a dog being scolded. "But then again, I honestly don't blame you for being so friendly to her. If I'd been in your place, I'd have seriously tried talking her pants off." She raises her eyebrows and smiles wickedly. "Then again, maybe I still will. The touch of a woman is a pleasure I've not experienced in a while, after all."

There aren't many things that can make me speechless. This is one of them.

Emma chuckles at my open-mouthed silence. "Oh, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby... you are _so_ naive. I was a member of the Hellfire Club, for goodness' sake! We had sex with anything and anybody, any time of the day." She sips her drink again, matter-of-factly. "You know, sometimes I miss those days." Then she leans forward and kisses me so hard that I can feel the burning taste of her drink on my tongue. "Then again, I have everything I want right here, so why would I need to revisit my past?"

Before I can answer, there is a loud burst of noise to our right, and once I've turned my head to look in its direction, I can see what that is – the wall of the casino has caved in, and through the gaping hole is pouring a horde of Brood. Their scuttling, chittering mass floods the bright neon innards of the casino, filling it with a mass of brown chitin and drool, the tide of alien bodies engulfing and tearing apart those people unlucky enough to be slow getting out of its way.

"Damn it!" I shout angrily, icing up and firing sharp bolts of ice at the invaders. "Can't I have a damn holiday without you creeps getting in my way?" Emma joins me in trying to fend off the monsters, shielding the two of us in a mental cocoon that will hopefully fry anything which tries to get through while she stabs at the Brood with long-range telepathic blades.

Just then, while we're busy trying to stay alive, a blue-suited, grey-skinned giant storms past us, his fists swinging at the Brood and pulverising them with every blow. "What are you idiots waiting for?" he bellows. "Get outta here – I'll keep these guys off you as long as I can!" As he finishes speaking, he lashes out with one designer boot and cracks open a Brood's skull, making it fall to the ground in a bloody heap, only to be devoured by its fellows as soon as it touches the floor.

"You heard the man," Emma says as she grabs my arm and drags me towards the nearest exit. "Time to make ourselves scarce." We scramble over to the door and bundle through it, slamming it shut behind us before starting to run down the corridor as fast as we can.

We've only gone a few steps before it shatters behind us and our grey-skinned saviour comes flying through it, skidding along the ground before kicking himself to his feet and running after us. "Change of plan," he says, charging towards us and scooping us both up in his arms. "Please keep your seat backs and tray tables in the upright position." Then he batters his way out of the building, hitting us with the scorching light of the Nevada sun as he does so, and leaps into the air, propelling us hundreds of metres away from the casino and into a rock formation outside the city. From here, I can see that the Brood have overwhelmed the casino – hundreds of them are crawling all over the building's exterior like cockroaches. "Well, ain't that something," the grey giant says. "Figures that I'd be the one unlucky enough to see an alien invasion – Big Green or Banner would have been the better choice, but no, it had to be me..."

"Excuse me?" Emma says. "Who exactly are you, again?"

The grey giant grins. "The name's Mr Fixit, but you can call me Joe..."


	2. Leg Breaker

_**Snake Eyes**_

_**Chapter Two: Leg Breaker**_

The grey giant who's just identified himself as "Mr Fixit" stands with his arms folded across his chest. "Well, don't all thank me at once," he said sarcastically, straightening out his arms and cracking his knuckles as Emma and I both look at him, surprise and confusion written all over our faces. "It's okay, I get this all the time," the giant goes on. "Look, kids, I'll make this easy for you, since you two clearly ain't the sharpest cards in the deck: you guys probably know me better as the Hulk. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be runnin' around shoutin' 'Hulk smash!' at the top a' my lungs, but you know what? Sometimes that gets real old, so –"

"Wait a second," I say, interrupting him (and causing him great annoyance, from the way the right corner of his lip twists upwards). "I've seen the Hulk. Isn't he supposed to be... you know, green?"

The giant rolls his eyes, as if he's heard that question a hundred times before. "You know, I hear this all the time, too. Look, small-fry, Bruce Banner's got more than one Hulk inside that peanut head a' his, an' I was the first. Big Green came after me, an' he's the one who gets all the bad press. Me? I'll hit things if I need to, but I don't go around lookin' for trouble, got it? Matter a' fact, I came back to Vegas because I needed my old job back. See, turns out that after Big Green tried to conquer the world a few weeks back, he and Banner decided they needed to lay low for a while, so they let ol' Joe out to play for a bit. An' it just so happens that I used to work for a guy here in Sin City – an' I made pretty good money, too. So I figured I'd come back here an' see if he'd want to re-hire me." He chuckles, a low rumbling sound that comes from deep inside his barrel chest, and spreads his huge hands out to either side. "Guess what? I'm back, baby!"

Emma raises an eyebrow. "You know, Mr... Fixit... that's all very interesting, but it doesn't explain how or why those alien creatures have appeared in this city. Have you seen or heard anything unusual in the past few weeks? I mean, alien cockroaches don't just appear out of nowhere –"

"Well, uh, actually the Brood can, Emma," I say, causing her to whirl round and glare at me as if I've just stolen her chequebook.

"Don't correct me when I'm ranting, Drake," she snaps, annoyed. "Now, as I was saying, have you seen or heard anything unusual?"

Fixit shrugs. "Not that I know of – but then again, I'm usually watchin' guys on the inside of the casino, not tryin' to look out for a bug infestation, you know?" He grins, and then he gives Emma an up-and-down assessment. "An' please, honey, call me Joe. Maybe after this is over, you an' I could ditch the dweeb and get to know each other a little better?"

"Drake might be a dweeb," Emma retorts, "but he's _my_ dweeb, so I'll thank you not to insult him, you big grey ape. Only _I_ get to do that."

"Thanks, Emma," I say, a little confused. "I think."

Fixit holds his hands up, admitting defeat. "Okay, okay, I get the message. Looks like you got yourself a keeper there, kid," he tells me with a knowing smile. "I'd hang onto her if I were you."

"Oh, he does," Emma says. "All night long." Then she turns around and points at the casino, which still has hundreds of Brood crawling all over it and blotting out the glow from the neon lights. "They're spreading," she states redundantly. "At the rate they're moving, they'll take the entire city within a day or two. Which means America, and then the rest of the world, is in a great deal of danger."

"Screw the rest a' the world," Fixit says. "I need my job!"

"Yes... quite," Emma says, rolling her eyes. "But whatever we're doing this for, we need to do it soon, and we need to do it properly, or else there won't be anything left for us to save. Now, Drake, you know more about the Brood than either of us, so maybe you should give us some kind of idea of what we're facing here."

"Well, I'll give it a try," I say, trying desperately to remember all of the information I have about the Brood stored away in my head. "Let's see... they're like an ant-hive. They have the worker drones and the soldier drones, like the ones down there, and they have a queen that directs it all. She gets her drones to kidnap people and then she lays eggs into them, so that they turn into more drones. They're kinda like the things in _Aliens – _but they're for real, you know?"

"Great," Fixit says. "Lemme guess... they have acid for blood, too, right?"

"I don't remember that the last time we fought them, but I don't think so," I say, somewhat relieved. "That's something, I suppose."

"Yeah," Fixit says, cracking his knuckles again before he moves to the edge of the outcropping we're all standing on, putting a hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun a little. He looks like he's trying to find something, but then he snorts in disgust and turns back towards us. "Doesn't look like those things are movin' away from the casino much. I don't know what they're plannin', but they ain't doing squat about movin' around." He looks back at me. "You know what they might be doin', kid?"

"Setting up a nest, probably," I say, well aware that I'm flying almost as blind here as Emma and Fixit. Scott would probably be the better one to ask, considering he's had far more experience with them than I have – but he's not here right now, so I guess it's down to me... "They'll use your casino as a place to store their captives – and by the time they're finished with it there won't be much left. They'll cover everything in slime and mucus and stuff like that. It's kind of their way of saying 'this is our home now, get your own'."

"Great," Fixit snarls. "Looks like it's up to us to play exterminator, then, don't it? You kids with me?"

"It seems like we have no choice," Emma says, already sounding weary, before she looks at me with bottomless scorn. "Have I mentioned how much I hate getting into these situations?"

I know what's coming, so it's best just to ride out the storm. "Once or twice, yeah."

"Exactly," Emma continues. "Every time we try to have a nice quiet holiday, one of the many people you've managed to annoy just _has_ to spoil it. Do you know how much that irritates me?"

"A lot?"

Emma scowls. "Yes, it irritates me a lot. Just once I'd like to have a nice quiet evening out where we don't have to save the world or fight anyone... but oh no, your little rogues' gallery has to barge in and make everything go to hell every time I –" I stop her in mid-flow by grabbing her around the waist and kissing her. She thrashes, furious, and I can feel her anger bubbling at the edge of my mind. Finally she manages to push herself away from me and shrieks "What the hell was that all about, Drake?"

"I was kissing you, last time I checked," I say, shrugging. "Look, Emma, I know this stinks – but you must have known you'd be getting into this sort of thing the moment you said yes to that first date. If you didn't think it was worth it just to stay with me, you'd never have agreed to meet me in the first place. Right?"

Emma rolls her eyes, and her shoulder slump in defeat. I can tell I'll be paying for that later, but right now it feels pretty good. "All right, Drake, you win. So what do you suggest we do?"

"Get moving, for starters," I say, pointing towards the city. "Those bugs might be sitting tight right now, but sooner or later they're going to want to start getting hold of more humans so they can lay some more eggs. If I remember rightly, that doesn't give us a lot of time." I turn back to Fixit, still looking at his massive bulk with a mixture of apprehension and awe. "Can you get us back into the city without attracting too much attention?"

Fixit sucks his teeth for a second or two, before he says "I can give it a try, but I ain't makin' any promises." He picks Emma and me up by our waists, and then leaps high into the air. The wind whistles in my ears as we travel quickly towards the centre of the strip, all the gaudy neon switched off for now. Fixit comes into land with a deafening crunching sound, the concrete under his feet splintering under his massive bulk. As he stands up straight and lets the two of us down to the ground, he glances down at one of his shoes and tuts loudly. "Damn – scuffed my shoe. Oh well, guess it'll have to wait until after the roaches get squashed." Looking up, he points towards a small alleyway between one of the casinos. "We can get a good view of the bugs from there, maybe plan our next move." Without waiting for us to respond, he dashes across the road and puts himself squarely in the middle of the alley, pretty much forcing the two of us to follow him.

"Charming man, isn't he?" Emma mutters as she moves quickly toward the alley alongside me, both of us crouched as low as possible in order to reduce the chances of being detected. "I think I preferred him when he had a vocabulary of three words."

"Gotta admit he has good taste in suits, though, right?" I reply.

Emma snorts in disdain. "Dress a gorilla in a suit, he's still a gorilla."

I can see her point. "Just try to get along with him for now. When we leave here, you can bitch about him as much as you like." Emma scowls blackly. "Look, for the record, I'm not exactly overjoyed to have to work with the guy either, but he's our best hope here." When we reach Fixit, I point to an access point the Brood have clearly made in the wall. It's a ragged-edged hole in the building's structure that's been smoothed out with thick, jelly-like mucus, which has dried out and formed a solid doorway to replace the existing one, which has been sealed tightly with the same kind of slime. Brood warriors scuttle in and out of it, carrying materials and screaming humans inside their new nest. "Crap," I whisper, horrified. "It's started. We have to be quick, or else those people will end up becoming new Brood."

"Right," Fixit says, his hands balling into wrecking-ball fists. "So what are we waitin' for – let's go kick some insect ass!" He stands up and is about to charge towards the casino when I grab his arm. He swings his gaze towards me, his eyes blazing with angry confusion. "What the hell are you doin', kid? Didn't you just say we needed to be quick?"

"Yeah, we do... but just running right in there and expecting to save the day is just stupid. We need to be careful about how we get in there." I turn towards Emma. "Can you disguise us telepathically?"

"Child's play," she says, before she closes her eyes and puts her fingers to her temples for a moment. "Done. We should be safe now. For as long as they can't figure out how to counter it, anyway– which shouldn't be for a long time." She sighs. "But if by some unlikely chance they should see through me, Drake, I suggest you go in iced-up and ready. And you –" she points at Mr Fixit "– had better be on your guard as well. I don't think it would be very clever of you to waltz in there expecting to have it all your own way."

Fixit's lip curls. "I don't tell you how to do your job, toots. Don't try tellin' me how to do mine."

"A fair point, I suppose," Emma says, raising her eyebrows. "Shall we go?"

Cautiously, the three of us make our way towards the opening in the wall, weaving through ranks of Brood drones that are adding more layers of sticky, colourless slime to the outside of the building until we are able to make our way inside. The inside of the building is almost unbearably moist and humid, and it bears only a small resemblance to what it had been before. Roulette tables have been overturned or broken in half, slot machines have been crushed into sparking piles of wreckage, and hundreds of humans are glued to the walls in incubation units. Some of them are unconscious and look like they've already been implanted with eggs, the blood trails leaking from their mouths indicating that the experience wasn't a pleasant one, but some of them are still awake and look totally terrified. Some of them are shrieking in fear, but others are so frightened they are completely silent, looking around themselves with eyes wide as saucers. It's those people I'm most worried about.

In one of the units closest to us, I can see Debbie, the cocktail waitress I met earlier today. She's unconscious and covered in solidified slime – but there are no blood trails on her chin, which makes me feel greatly relieved. I start moving towards her, intent on freeing her from her prison, when Emma grabs my shoulder. _Not now, Bobby_, she says in my head, ignoring my defiance. _She's fine for the moment. When we get rid of the Brood, then we can start cleaning up after them... but for now these people will have to wait. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, I believe is the saying?_

I think about ignoring her for a moment or two, but then I realise that she's right, and what's lying in the centre of the room helps to make that decision for me. Massive, bloated and giving off an aura of sheer evil, the Brood queen sits in a shallow pool of her own slime, nipping at her returning drones with absurdly delicate flicks of her tendrils. She brings those tendrils to her mouth and sniffs at them, as if she is testing the atmosphere the drones have been working in. "Unacceptable," she hisses in disgust, mucus drooling from her mouthparts. "This environment is unacceptable. It must be adapted. Send out spore drones and have them start gathering local wildlife for conversion into atmospheric alteration units – as they spread out from here, they will help us turn this environment into something more agreeable. Soon the rain will fall, the desert will heal itself, and the Brood can start colonising this morsel of a planet."

"Yes, Majesty," one of her servant Brood says, spreading its tentacles wide in submission before it turns around and scuttles away, its chitinous feet clicking softly as it does so.

"Guess she's not a fan of global warming," I whisper, trying to find some humour in the concept of an alien race fundamentally altering part of the planet to their own needs. "Maybe she and Al Gore should team up."

_Shut up, Bobby,_ Emma sends to me angrily. _Do you _want _us to be discovered? Talk this way if you have to, otherwise don't say a damn word._ She looks over at Fixit. _And that goes for you too, you obnoxious ape._ He doesn't say anything, instead just adjusting his cufflinks and giving her a nod. _Good,_ she continues, before pointing at what looks like a weak point in the queen's armoured hide, where one of the chitin plates that covers her entire right side has a few hairline cracks running through it. _Could either of you force that open? I can try to distract her majesty with a psi-attack, but I don't think I'll be able to do it for long. If we're going to try killing that monster, it has to be quick._

_Lady, you're nuts,_ Fixit says, before he grins. _Knew there was something else I liked about you._

_Do we have to kill her?_ I say. _I mean, isn't there another way? Can't we just... I don't know... scare them off?_

Fixit and Emma look at each other, almost totally stunned. _You wanna tell him, or should I?_ Fixit says, jerking his huge thumb at me.

_I'll do it,_ Emma says, rolling her eyes. _Bobby, you of all people should know that this isn't going to end well, no matter what we do. The fact is, we need to destroy that thing before she turns this city into a tomb. And more than that, we need to destroy her before she turns the rest of the world into more Brood. I know I don't want to become a giant space cockroach, and I'm pretty sure you don't either. She has to die, or everyone else on the planet will suffer. Are we clear?_

I nod, resigned to what has to be done. _Yeah. Yeah, we're clear. So what do you want me to do?_

_Put some ice in that crack in her armour, and then expand it so that Mr Fixit here can get a good grip on it. When he tears the plating off, freeze her insides, and he'll be able to shatter them with a few good punches. Problem solved, yes?_

_I guess so. Here goes..._ I ice up my right hand and start layering ice thinly into the armour's breach, building it up slowly so that the queen won't have much idea what it is that's about to get her killed. In the thick heat of the nest, a small amount of cold is bound to go unnoticed, at least for a while. The plating starts to shift outwards a little, its edges pushing up above the line of her abdomen, and then I start increasing the amount of ice so that it starts to crack. Fixit leaps up when he sees the results of my efforts and begins to run towards the queen's body as fast as he can, dodging the numerous other drones as they skitter around the nest, chittering away quietly to themselves. When he reaches the side of the queen, he grabs hold of the plate and begins to heave at it, the sticky mucus it's covered with making him lose his grip a couple of times. It's then that we hear the queen speak again, her hissing tones echoing throughout the inside of her lair.

"I know you're there, X-Men," she gloats. "Did you three fleshbags think you could possibly go unnoticed here? My children and I have taken control of the bodies of thousands of telepaths – telepaths who were far more powerful than any human could ever hope to be." She turns towards Fixit, her huge bulk shifting a little so that she can focus her unblinking red eyes on him. "And you – I suggest you take your hands off me, if you wish to continue breathing."

"Go to hell," Fixit snarls back defiantly. "Joe Fixit ain't nobody's slave." In response, the queen lashes out with a meaty talon-tipped tentacle and flips him over onto his back, sending him skidding away along the ravaged floor of the casino. Fixit lies on his back for a second, stunned, before he gets back up and spits out a thick glob of green blood. "Nice joke, roach. Tell me another." He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then starts to charge towards the queen again, only to find a swarm of Brood closing ranks in front of him, so that they can protect their queen.

"You know, Drake, I think he needs your help," Emma says flatly.

"You know, Emma, I think you're right," I say, jumping up from cover and icing up completely, before launching an ice-slide towards where the slobbering hordes of Brood are gathering. When I get to where Fixit is standing, I hop down beside him and say casually "Nice day, huh?"

"Shut up, popsicle," Fixit growls. "I don't need no help from a midget like you when it comes to swatting bugs."

"Yeah, I think you do," I say, hitting a Brood warrior that was about to leap at Fixit with a bolt of ice. "You can thank me later."

Fixit scowls, and then grabs a Brood around its throat with one giant fist. "It's hammer-time, pal," he says, before smashing his hand right through its mouthful of fangs and making its head come apart in a shower of bloody chitin. "Boo-yah!"

I try to ignore what he's just done, instead forming two sharp, hardened ice-blades around the ends of my hands and swiping at the nearest Brood with them. The molecule-thin edge hacks right through the creature's body and steaming guts spill out onto the floor, pooling into a bloody heap. The Brood gurgles once, twice and then a third time before it lies still. I can feel vomit rising in my throat at what I've just done, but there's no time for that now, as another one leaps at me, hissing and drooling, its tentacles whipping at me and trying to cut me with their sharp tips. Ducking inside the reach of the tendrils, I fire one of the sharp blades off my hand and watch it hurtle through the air and lodge itself right into the creature's right eye, spraying glistening crimson goo everywhere.

Fixit notices what I'm doing and yells "Good one, kid. Few more a' those and we'll be finished here in no time!"

_God, I hope not..._


	3. Royal Flush

**_Snake-Eyes_**

**_Chapter Three: Royal Flush_**

The Brood are all around us, chittering and screeching with bloodlust. I'm as iced-up as much as I dare, all spikes and muscle, Emma is stabbing at the aliens with telepathic lances (and spin-kicking them when they get too close for comfort), and Fixit is bellowing loudly as he barrels through the horde with both fists swinging and green blood flying from numerous cuts on his skin. The Brood queen sits in her pool of mucus and slime behind her soldiers, laughing wickedly as they swarm towards us, totally unconcerned for their own safety. Ropes of waxy resin drool from the sides of the queens mouth as she cackles, and are cleared away diligently by mindless worker drones that still perform their assigned duties with precision, even though their queen is under attack. The hissing soldier drones, on the other hand, are totally focused on turning us inside out, their red eyes lit with murderous intent and their clawed tentacles lashing out like flails.

The queen stops laughing long enough to speak over the din of her warriors attack. "Surrender, humans," she cries, spreading her talons widely to either side of her massive, armoured body. "Surrender and you will not be harmed any further. Join us! Join the glory of the Brood!"

We give her no answer except to redouble our efforts against her soldiers. Emma lands a solid kick to the face of one of the Brood that has managed to penetrate her telepathic shield, smashing the chitin and pulping the brain matter behind it, while Fixit grabs one by the tip of its sharp tail and uses it like a baseball bat, slamming it into the wave of bodies behind it. The first few Brood drones are sent flying like skittles, their tentacles flailing uselessly in the air, but the rest of them are simply beaten backwards for a moment or two. Meanwhile I keep up a solid spray of sharp ice, moving my arms left and right in a near-semicircle so that I can hit as many of the screeching insects as possible. At the same time I form another barrier of foot-thick ice so that I can get some protection from their stabbing tentacles and sharp, broken teeth. It lasts maybe two or three minutes before it cracks and shatters under the weight of bodies in front of it.

_Time to fall back, I think,_ Emma says telepathically, punching a Brood square in the face as she does so. _We need to get to higher ground and rethink our strategy._

"Good idea, toots," Fixit says, before he grabs hold of Emma and myself and tucks us under his massive arms. "Hold tight, kids..." With a couple of leaps and bounds he is once again outside the casino, the sweltering heat of the desert hitting me like a concrete wall. Behind us I can hear the bloodthirsty shrieks of the Brood warriors dying out as the Queen calls them back. Fixit looks behind him in confusion. "Wait," he says, jerking a thumb towards the hole ripped into the side of the casino. "Why aren't those things followin' us? I thought we were supposed to be the main course."

"She probably doesn't think we're important enough right now," I say, shrugging. "In fact, she's probably thinking that she can get to us when she thinks she's ready - and from the way she called back all those drones, I'd say she doesn't think that just yet."

"So, Drake," Emma says, folding her arms across her chest, "what do you suggest we do now?"

"Call for back-up," I say quietly. "With that many Brood around, the three of us are going to be in big trouble if we try anything else. They know were here now, so trying to sneak back in is a really dumb idea."

"No can do, kid," Fixit replies, shaking his head. "This needs to be dealt with right now. If we wait for your buddies to show up there's no tellin' how much more of the city those things will take."

"He may have a point, Drake," Emma says, putting her hand on her chin thoughtfully. "So what do you suggest we do?"

"Wait a second - why am I suddenly in charge?" I retort, startled. "I'm not a leader!"

"Then you had better start growing into one," Emma snaps. "You're the only one who's encountered these things before, so you're the only one who has any idea how to fight them. I'm sorry if that makes you feel uncomfortable, Drake, but that's the way it is. Now start acting like you're in charge, or were all bug-food."

"Okay," I say, running my hands through my sweat-soaked hair. "Okay. The thing with the Brood is that they're all focused around the queen. From what I can remember from Hank's computer files, they're nothing without her - some of the bigger ones are still able to think, but most of them don't know which way to turn until one of the high-level drones turns into a queen. That doesn't take long - maybe a week or so at most. If we take out the queen now, the hive wont be able to carry on, and if were lucky they'll just get back onto their ship and leave so that they can regroup and wait for the new queen to start laying eggs."

"And if we're not lucky?" Fixit asks.

"Then they stay right where they are," I say with a shrug. "The only good thing that could come out of that is it would give me time to call in the rest of the X-Men to clean this mess up."

"I guess we gotta take what good we can get," Fixit replies, brushing a few specks of dust off the ragged shoulder of his ruined suit. "So whaddaya suggest, kid? I'm all ears."

"As am I, Drake," Emma says, folding her arms again, and pursing her lips into an intrigued little smile.

"Well," I begin, swallowing nervously as two sets of demanding eyes seem to bore into my skull, "we could always run into the desert. At least that way we'd die quickly."

"Be serious, Bobby," Emma says. "Think. How can we get the upper hand here?"

I incline my head backwards so that I can look up at the sky, trying to see if the endless blue can calm my brain down enough for me to think clearly. Just then, as I'm looking up into the air, I notice that the roof of the casino has large plates of glass set into it, and an idea springs into my head. Right, I say, a bit more decisively than before, and point towards where I'm looking. Do you guys see what I can see? There's glass in the roof. If we can't get through the doors we could always make our way in through that."

"Are you insane?" Emma asks, looking horrified. "Do you know how high up that is?"

"Yeah, I do know how high up that is," I reply. "And I'm betting ol' Joe here can jump that distance if he really tries hard." I slap Fixit on his bicep with my hand, involuntarily feeling intimidated by the granite hardness of the muscle. He grins broadly, his teeth impossibly white against his grey skin.

"Piece a cake, kid," he growls. "Then what?"

"You drop right onto Her Majesty and take her out of commission. That should let Emma and I start cleaning up the leftovers."

"Sounds like a good plan," Emma agrees. "Do you have a plan B in case it all goes wrong?"

"Run out into the desert," I say again. "Like I said, I have my X-Men communicator and we could always call in back-up if it gets too busy out here."

Emma snorts, but doesn't say anything else. I ball my fists and ice myself up while at the same time creating an ice-slide which curls and winds it way right to the top of the building. In the corner of my eye I can see Fixit jumping up to meet me, with Emma tucked under his arm like a ragdoll. When were all on the rooftop, I take a look down into the casino through the thick panes of glass. The scene is a lot more catastrophic from up here, with every piece of smashed furniture and broken Brood body even more visible. Around the edge of the room, many of the captives are vomiting blood and convulsing violently. The eggs the Queen has laid in them are hatching, and the new Brood are clearly eager to join their buddies. The chittering of the aliens is deafening even from up here, and it gets louder as the first new Brood flops out of its hatching chamber, its spiky limbs and flailing tentacles covered with slime and gore. The Queen raises her own massive tendrils and screeches in triumph, her scream filling her lair. Her children join in, until the whole nest sounds as if it's a single unified creature.

Its not exactly the most comforting of noises.

"Okay," Fixit says, cracking his knuckles for the third time in five minutes. Here goes nothin'..." Then he pounds a hole in the glass plates over the queen, sending a shower of sharp fragments down onto her head. Some of them jam themselves into small gaps in the queens armour, and she howls in pain, whipping her head up to see where the glass has come from.

"Kill them!" she hisses, gesturing at us with one long, claw-tipped tendril. "Kill them and feed their bodies to the newborns!"

"Sorry, ugly," Fixit says as he leaps into the gap he's made and plummets towards the queens bloated form. "Big Joe, comin through!" He lands squarely on her back and crunches his fingers through her armour to stop her from throwing him off, clawing his way along her body and leaving sticky green trails of alien gore running down her sides. She howls again and again, thrashing vainly to try to throw him off, but it doesn't work. As the echoes of her movements ripple through the floor, I generate an ice-slide down to the ground, firing off ice-darts as I do so. Emma clings to me as we drop, before hopping lightly to the floor and smashing a Brood warrior in the jaw with a vertical kick. The alien stumbles away, spitting acidic green blood and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth.

_Come on, Drake!_ Emma shrieks as she finds her footing on the slime-soaked floor of the casino. _This was your plan! Do something!_

"Good idea," I say, and bulk up my ice-form by about a hundred pounds. Solid ice spikes protrude off every part of my body, and I use them to hammer a messy path through the aliens. Emma stands alongside me as I do so, psychically backing up my physical attacks by slowing down the Brood warriors just enough for me to make them into paste. Its hard doing this to what I know are sentient beings... but when the choice is one civilisation against another, Ill protect my own society no matter what it takes. Humanity might be pretty damn flawed, but its all I've got.

_Besides, I need to cash in my chips here. Cant let that go, either._

Looking ahead of me I can see Fixit clambering over the queen's giant egg-sac, his fingers sinking deep into the slimy chitin of her body. Even from this distance I can see trails of gooey innards rolling down her sides as she screams in anger and pain. As he moves forwards, he is jumped on by half a dozen massive Brood warriors, their heavy bodies completely covering him for a moment or two. The pile of warriors thrashes for a moment or two before it goes still, and for a split second I think they just might have got the better of our grey-skinned tag-team partner... and then the pile of Brood explodes in all directions, loops of innards and armour spraying everywhere as Fixit rears up to his full height, laughing like a madman and smashing his attackers to pulp with his fists.

_Remind me again why we agreed to cooperate with that man?_ Emma sends to me sarcastically.

_I think it was his winning smile that did it,_ I reply, before I see Debbie the cocktail waitress again. She's still unconscious and totally defenceless, and even in the middle of this chaos a worker Brood is busy scuttling towards her with an egg, ready to implant her with a new Brood embryo. This time I'm determined to save her, though, so I create an ice slide and take Emma and myself over to where shes being held prisoner. Kicking the Brood aside, its multiple legs flailing, I hack open her slimy prison and pull her free of it. Her head flops down onto her chest and her arms and legs are completely limp. Help me with her, Emma, I say, quickly throwing one of her arms over my shoulder and dragging her to her feet. Emma follows my example, and together we pull her free of the solidified slime which covers the walls. As we do so, Emma sends me a sharp telepathic message asking me why I'm so bothered about a girl I only met less than two hours ago. "I'm bothered because I'm a good guy," I say, shortly. "I don't know anything about her, really, but I know her more than I know anyone else here, so I'm starting with her. When we're done getting her out of here, we can start with the rest of the prisoners. Okay?"

Emma shrugs, and carries on helping me get Debbie closer to one of the exits. It's sealed with mucus, but a few quick blasts of ice render the slime brittle and easily broken. When it's all gone, I kick the door open and help Emma bring Debbie through. Laying her on the pavement outside the casino, I see that her chest is still gently rising and falling. "Is she still -" I begin.

"If you mean 'is she still in control of her body', then yes, she is," Emma says, briefly touching a finger to her forehead. "I can sense some residual thought patterns from her - nothing particularly special, but at least her mind hasn't been compromised or her brain injured."

"Good," I say, before I gesture at the opened door. "Come on - we have people to rescue."

Emma rolls her eyes. "The things I do for you, Drake. Okay - how do you want to do this?"

"I have a few ideas," I begin. "Can you tell me from here which of the humans in there hasn't been implanted with an egg yet?"

"Easily," Emma replies. "I assume that means you want to give up on the ones who have already been infected?"

"I've seen this before, Emma," I say sadly."Once someone gets infected with a Brood egg, they're not human any longer. There's no way back."

"And no reason to try saving them," Emma finishes. "All right then. Give me a second and I'll try to see who's been infected and who hasn't."

"Great," I say. "Once we're back in there well be able to see who's who when we get close to them - they'll all have blood trails down their chins - but while we're out here I need to know precise numbers so I can get a good idea of what were really up against."

"That's my boy, Drake," Emma grins. "I knew you had a leader in you somewhere."

"I'm trying my best," I say. "Don't tell Scott, or he might get jealous."

Emma flicks her eyebrows up briefly. "I doubt that, but whatever makes you happy." She puts her fingers to her temples and closes her eyes, taking a deep breath as she does so. She frowns for a moment, then opens her eyes again. "There are twenty people left uninfected in there," she says. "They're scattered around the edges of the casino, though, so I don't know if well be able to get to them all in time."

"Well, we can try," I say, icing myself up a little bit more. "You want to give it a shot?"

"Sure, if it'll get you to leave me alone for a few hours," Emma replies, reaching out and squeezing my hand encouragingly."Lead the way, hero..."

"Okay. Here goes nothing," I say, and charge back into the casino. The Brood are still focused almost exclusively on trying to get Fixit off their queen's back, without much success. He is swamped by them occasionally, but claws his way out every time, sometimes by using a Brood body part as a makeshift weapon his favourite seems to be the tail, or a forelimb, presumably because of their flexibility. "Emma, send him a message telling him the backup is here."

"Done," Emma says after a second or two. "He says he'll be finishing this up as soon as he can."

"Good," I reply. "I don't want to be in here any longer than I have to be."

Moving towards the first of the human captives, I can see that it's a man in his early forties, his thinning, greying hair flopping down over his face and his clothes ripped to shreds. I decide to risk an ice-slide to get to him quickly, and move as fast as I can to crack open the shell he's been imprisoned in by giving it a short blast of sub-zero air. As the cold hits it, wide cracks start spider-webbing their way across its surface so that I can easily snap it open. He slumps to the ground when he's free, and I repeat my ice-slide stunt to get him to the entrance. When were both outside, he looks up at me blearily and whispers "What's happening?"

"We're saving the day, sir," I tell him reassuringly. "Don't worry, this will all be over really soon."

_But we haven't saved the day just yet, have we?_ Emma says, echoing the thoughts going around in my mind. Gritting my teeth, I tell her to have a little more confidence and then turn around so that I can re-enter the casino. And its then that our way is blocked by a massive Brood warrior, its jaws dripping with ropes of sticky saliva. It towers over Emma and me, glaring at us with blood-red eyes and baring its vicious fangs.

"You Terrans are nothing but weak maggots," it gloats, hissing. "The glory of your deaths will be mine!" Then it lunges at us, swinging its claws and scoring three deep lines across my iced-up chest. Emma yelps and manages to leap backwards out of the creatures reach, receiving only a small scratch on her shoulder. The Brood snarls and leaps again, barrelling right into me and knocking me flat on my back. For a moment it shoves its face close to mine, its drool running down my cheek and its nails-on-a-chalkboard laughter echoing in my ears. "Maybe Ill make this quick," it ponders, its rotten-meat breath washing over me. "Maybe I'll make you suffer."

As it thinks about how it's going to kill me, it doesn't notice Emma running up behind it. She leaps onto its back, wrapping her arms around its throat and thrashing. Her nails break and splinter against its armour, making her scream with pain as blood starts to drip from her fingertips. As the Brood starts to concentrate on her, its weight eases off my chest. Emma holds on as tightly as she can until I've managed to wriggle free and cover my ice-form in a forest of spikes so that it cant grab me again, and then I throw myself back at the monster, slamming a sharply-pointed fist right into its fang-filled mouth. The teeth shatter like a skull thrown against a wall, and the Brood howls, still partially distracted by Emma. "Kill it, Drake!" Emma shrieks. "Kill it now!"

Ducking under a wild swipe of the Brood's clawed tentacle, I kick one of its legs hard, making the creature stagger as it's lifted off the ground for a moment, and then drive both of my hands right into the thing's throat. Once they're firmly embedded, I move my arms apart quickly, shredding the warrior's armour and making it slump to the ground, dead. As it sags to the floor, Emma slides off its back and then spits on it. "That's for ruining my manicure, you bastard," she snarls. Then she turns to me and jabs a bloodied finger right in the centre of my chest. "And as for you... don't you ever make me do that again. Do you know how much these fingernails _cost_?"

"I'm guessing a lot,"I reply. "Come on, Emma, we have people to save. We can argue about cosmetics later." Scowling, Emma nods, and follows me back through the hole in the wall.

It's then that I see that Fixit has managed to beat off the Brood hordes long enough to reaches the queen's head, and she twists herself so that she can look him in the eye. She's in big trouble, and she knows it.

"Why do you resist?" the queen squeals in high-pitched desperation. "Consider the inevitable fate of your planet - if you do not join us, you will be destroyed. It doesn't matter whether you stop us here; sooner or later the Brood will have this planet for our own!"

"Huh," Fixit says, casually batting aside a Brood warrior that has leapt at him in an attempt to rescue its ruler. "You know what I think, your majesty? I think death's better than livin' as ugly as you - so you can take your offer and shove it up your oversized egg-sac. No offense." With that, he draws back his big grey fist and drives it straight through the queen's armoured skull, pulping her brain and making every single one of her warriors howl in despair before focusing entirely on him.

"That's our cue," I say, grabbing Emma around the waist and forming an ice-slide to get us over to where Fixit is standing as quickly as possible. When we're standing next to him, he grins broadly, his teeth white against his grey, blood-spattered lips.

"What took you guys so long?" he asks, jokingly. "Looks like we need to do some clean-up here. Got any bug-spray?"

"Don't be ridiculous, you big grey ape," Emma snorts and then belts an attacking Brood across the face with a right cross that surprises even herself. "I'm going to 'bust some heads', as Drake would say. You can stay here, or you can come with me. Your choice." Then she moves forwards, stabbing outwards with fists and feet while radiating an invisible telepathic energy that I can feel burning at the edge of my mind. As she moves forwards, I can see that the energy is clearly slowing down the Brood that come near her, their movements sluggish and drunken as she hammers into them, shrieking with pain and rage.

"Wow. I like this gal," Fixit chuckles. "You comin, kid?"

I shrug. "Sure, why not?"

The two of us follow Emma's angry path of destruction, slamming into the disorientated Brood with all the force we can muster. Their soldiers continue to scream and hurl themselves at us, their claws and teeth ready to cut us to shreds - but without their queen to motivate and control them, they're just a disorganised mob, crawling over each other and making their attacks a blunted mess. It doesn't take long for the casino to get cleared out, twitching alien bodies all that's left of this particular invasion. When they're all dead, it falls to Emma and me to free the rest of the hostages that can be saved, while Fixit takes on the nasty task of mercy-killing all the humans who've been infected with Brood eggs. While he's doing that, I find the cocktail waitress Debbie amongst the small group of survivors. "Hey," I say, cautiously. "How are you?"

She smiles tiredly. "I feel like I just got hit by a freight train, but other than that, I'm fine. Thank you... Bobby, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, that's me," I reply, returning her smile. "Look, I'm sorry you had to get involved with all this, but... well, its kind of unavoidable when I'm around."

"So I see," she says, before Fixit emerges from the casino through the hole in the wall. Her eyes light up and she raises her arm to wave to him. "Joe! Joe, over here! Its me, Debbie!" Fixit waves back, and then makes his way over to where we are sitting. He takes Debbie by the hand, helps her to her feet and then kisses her.

My jaw almost hits the ground. "Wait...so you and Fixit are -"

"Yeah," Fixit says indignantly, his huge arm around Debbie's waist. "So?"

"Nothing, I'm just... surprised, is all."

"Yeah - most people are," Fixit chuckles, before he hoists Debbie up onto his shoulder. "Been together a few months now." Then he extends his hand. "Thanks, kid - savin' her means a lot to me." We shake hands and then he claps me on the shoulder, jerking a thumb at the wrecked casino as he does so. "I reckon it'll be a while before they fix this place up - but when they do, you come back here and I'll make sure you get a bucketful of free chips and free booze all night long. How does that sound?"

I'm about to reply when Emma butts in. "I think it would take a lot more to get me to come back, Fixit." She holds up her hands, the ruined nails still inflamed and bloody. She turns on her heel and walks away. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to call a helicopter to take Drake and me back to civilisation. Are you coming, _dearest_?"

The tone of her voice indicates I have no choice, but for one last precious moment, I try to keep my dream alive. "I'm sure I can change her mind, man. We'll be back as soon as we can, I swear."

_"Drake!"_ Emma bellows, still walking away as quickly as she can. "I swear I'll leave you here if you don't come with me right this instant."

"Better go, squirt," Fixit laughs. "See you around." Sighing, I turn and run after Emma, until I've caught up to her completely. She looks at me and scowls.

"If you think we're coming back to this hellhole, then you're sadly mistaken. Anywhere that costs me my nails is immediately blacklisted."

"Well, what if _I_ want to come back here?" I say, annoyed. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

To my surprise, Emma laughs. "Oh, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby..." she says, smiling and tapping me on the nose. "The sooner you realise that I wear the pants in this relationship, the better..."


End file.
